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1430
'The Arcane Construction and Demolition Company' 'A hot secret in construction' The SMC had been a liberal user of arcane assistance for moving earth: raising and lowering land, creating berms, ditches, moats, hills and so forth – and had done so for construction and by 1430 DR, had been executing mining operations for 101 years. Now, the SMC was trying something new deep underground: they were melting soil and rocks into a form of magma, flowing it into forms, then quickly cooling it into a solid shape. For the time being, this evolving technique was treated as extremely sensitive… 'Manufactured Stone' The initial technique was to melt earth in blocks, capture the magma, and pump it into forms. Much of this was sparked by the use and success of concrete over the last century. Concrete had high compressive strength but low tensile strength, and required reinforcement for certain applications. Granted, it was far better than the wood or brick structures that might been used otherwise in most structures, but it fell short against the cut-slab stone preferred for fortified structures (keeps and castles). Vitrification created stone that was, on average, considerably stronger than concrete, though it varied depending on the material melted. At this point, they were experimenting to see how strong soils became when turned into rock, whether they were water-permeable and so on. Part of that process was doping the molten material just as they were used to doping the concrete to change the properties. 'Basic Construction' After melting whatever materials were present – it worked with anything: mud, soil, sand, clay or stone – they pumped the magma into wall, ceiling, floor or column forms. They could go in whole sections, or create bricks to build as necessary. Underground, this reclaimed certain area of the mine, strengthening excavated chambers by refilling them with stone. In many cases, they picked and chose what to fill in – retaining chambers or passageways. 'Tunneling and Boring' They could tunnel with minimum shock to an area by melting as they went – which was hundreds of times faster than most other boring techniques. In very short order, during the pumping process, when filling the forms, it was discovered they could pump the magma under pressure, not only melting and reforming the walls of the subterranean structure they were in, but that the molten stone would seep deep into the surrounding soils and create tunnel walls that were incredibly strong. The walls were steel-strength, impermeable to water, with wear capacity to last tens of thousands of years – maybe longer. Nothing was absolutely impenetrable, but there was no traditional method that could sneak through this – making it perfect for deep passages, vaults, bunkers, and so on. 'Speedy Erections' The length of time for building structures is effectively 1/10th of what it would be with conventional methods. 10 years of traditional construction can be completed in a year – and provide a superior, multi-millennium-level durability with incredible defensibility. Category:Hall of Records Category:Timeline